Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.

Kind words cost no more than unkind ones . . . and we may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindliness around us at so little expense. If you would fall into any extreme let it be on the side of gentleness. The human mind is so constructed that it resists vigor and yields to softness.

All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.